With House Bill 1361 Texas legislators are determined to keep track of every single little baby chick in Texas. Each cutie must be tagged with a 15 digit number to identify it. All locations containing livestock animals must register as farms. $10 annual premise ID and premise registration fee will be required for all homes where any animal ever exists, even if just visiting. Anyone found not reporting a baby chick hatching, movement or death will face a fine of $1,000 per day for non-compliance. Similar fines for all other forms of livestock were also enacted.
With all this paperwork, fees and fines forget about 4-H. Forget about Future Farmers of America. 
Forget about that baby chick hatching school project. Homesteaders, you better eat your chickens now and don’t bother counting them. No more eggs. No more summer pigs. Slaughter that fatted calf. From now on plan on purchasing your food only at government approved distribution centers with sufficiently powerful lobbyists and friends in high places. Sorry small farmers - no more farmer’s market or farm stands in the future. The paperwork will destroy small farmers. So dies the Buy Local movement.
This monstrosity was originally brought to you by your friends at the USDA under the guise of NAIS - the National Animal Identification System. The Texas Animal Health Commission, which developed the rules in Texas, 
can be reached with comments on this absurdity by email until 5pm February 6th, 2006. The question is, are they really listening. Be sure that after that short “public comment” period they’re going to cover their collective eyes and ears as the food supply consolidates into the hands of the big producers. Do you think that will make the national food supply safer?
Perhaps our pseudo-elected Govi-Corp doesn’t have enough to do, so they sit around thinking up things like this. Remember: Idle hands do the devil’s work…
Attention TEXAS!…
THEY HAVE YOUR CHICK SURROUNDED…
Trackback South of the Gnat Line — January 30, 2006 @ 9:02 am
Attention TEXAS!!…
THEY HAVE YOUR CHICK SURROUNDED……
…
Trackback South of the Gnat Line — January 30, 2006 @ 9:33 am
Civic Lessons: Teaching Activism - Learning by Living Life…
I am so proud of my youngest son - he has drawn his first political cartoon.
“Political cartoon?” you ask.
…
Trackback Jacobs Academy: A Dirt Road Education — January 30, 2006 @ 11:00 am
This is to much their are more important things the government should be working on real problems like getting out of iraq and building a new place for new orleans peple.
I like the drawings. Did you draw them?
Comment P.V. — January 30, 2006 @ 2:35 pm
In the early 80’s I read a few publications put out by the John Birch Society their warnings were of the “Big Brother is Coming” type. They warned that the stage was being set for things like the Patriot Act and NAIS to occur. I distinctly reading an article in one their publications that said there were Nazi’s and communists in high level gov’t positions. Back in those days they were considered far right, paranoid radicals. Sadly much of they predicted has come true. How different things could have been had more ppl listened to their warnings.
Comment AislinnFireHorse — February 5, 2006 @ 8:42 pm
Just checking in. I never installed blog software and need to for my theme on restore data deleted.Do you have to upgrade your blog code often? Is it simple to do?. Thanks
Yes, modifying the templates and updating them is pretty easy. It does help to learn a little HTML for the basics like links, images, lists, bold, italic, etc. There are online resources for learning all that good stuff. Google for “How To Learn HTML” or something like that -WJ
Comment Nada — February 9, 2006 @ 12:14 pm
Disturbed…
We love the Tractor Supply store…
Trackback South of the Gnat Line — February 15, 2006 @ 9:38 am
Surely there is some compromise that can be met to make the exporters happy with getting their export makrets but also not bothering the little farmers and people growing their own meat and eggs. Besides, wasn’t NAIS supposed to be for jsut cattle? That is what I had heard a long time ago. What if it were just kept for the cattle industry who wants to export. Or anyone who wants to export. Other animals dont’ have to get registered and traced and tracked. The exporters just need to prove their animals haven’t come in contact with animals that were sick or were not tracked. That should be such an easy thing to do.
Comment Aphlosso — February 16, 2006 @ 2:10 pm
I know I am not about to buy radioated meat for my family. That is unsafe. Are they trying to kill us? First they use hormones and then genatic engineers and then poisonous chemicals and now they are radiating the meat and sticking microcomputers into it. What if someone gets kille d from eating the chips? Who is going to get held liable? You can bet your horses the USDA isn’t going to pay up and they are the ones forcing this onto us all.
Comment Mark — February 27, 2006 @ 10:09 pm
I think this will cause more resentment than anything. I’m tired of the government telling me what I have to do, they aren’t doing anything for me, except spending my tax dollars over seas!
Comment Connie Fisher — March 1, 2006 @ 11:36 am
Like we need more government breathing down our necks. This is all the falt of the busy body liberals who want to control all of our lives. Why cant they just leave us alone. People dont need the government telling them what to do at every turn of their lives.
Comment Cecil — March 4, 2006 @ 3:13 pm
I have spoken with my state senators and reps and most of them agree this is too much. They are going to do what they can to block it.
Comment Roger H — March 10, 2006 @ 8:04 am
NO NAID!
NO RFID!
LEAVE US ALL ALONE!
I am a physicist, and I shall not
put up with this kind of over-government based on fear!
STOP THIS NOW!!!
Check out www.thinkscapes.com
health button for more information on legislation and health and other relevant topics.
Comment Mark Cukmaskkie — March 16, 2006 @ 4:30 pm
Here we sit on our little 10 acres in Iowa.. worring about marking our little chickens !!?
To Make Free People worry about such a sickening thing as this is NOT the America I grew up in !!
It will only make the COrp. richer and take away from the family / farm.
johannas! SHAME ON YOU !!!!!!!!We thought you were one of the good guys !!!
I am telling EVERYONE one I know here .. ESP> NE.. Where Johanns came from ;_)
Comment Kim Mickey — March 19, 2006 @ 10:16 am
I’ve read a bunch on this, and it is scary! One thing I’ve noticed that’s lacking, the hunters view. How is this going to affect hunting wild game if all animals are to be caught, tagged, and tracked? How about the money the hunting industry produces for the state of Texas? Especially that money that is earmarked for conservation, and aquiring property for the publics use?Will hunters want to harvest animals that have been handled and tamed? NO! How about the small ranches like mine? I’ll go shoot all my animals before I go through someone coming on my property with a notebook,penalizing and charging me money if I’m not in compliance. No more Ag exemption for property if I have no stock. So, it will also affect Farm lenders. Small farmers and ranchers are thier bread and butter.What are the long term affects going to be down the line for those businesses? Being in a small business, visiting other much larger producers to see what they do, I want to say the quality of animals in those big productions is lacking in comparision to the smaller producers. Look, if you have mass quanities of paperwork to look at each day compared to two or three peices you have to look at, are you going to pay attention to detail more so with the mass quantities, or the smaller amount? The big, rich producers will get richer with no competition, and the small quality oriented producers will not be able to compete. Like someone said before, What is happening in our free country? Especially Texas? I have been told that within a few years, if I want to hunt an animal, I’d better get used to a big ol’ tag hanging out of it’s ear. That, I refuse to do. I just changed my passion for hunting anything other than wild game. No more exotic game for me! Those exotic game ranchers better shut down thier operations now for real hunters. I’m sure killers will still participate, but hopefully, there aren’t a lot of them out there.
Comment Wendy White — March 23, 2006 @ 6:01 pm
I thought TEXAS was supposed to be a conservative state, but none of our senators voted against HB1361! now who am I supposed to vote for?
Comment Austin — March 29, 2006 @ 8:15 pm
Does this apply to Ky too or just Tx?
Comment Tessa — April 7, 2006 @ 1:37 pm
I would just like to say that this has nothing to do with a person’s political party or views. Whether one lives in Texas or any other state, this proposed legislation is bad for all of us. We need to look beyond the stupid arguments of political lines and fight this. What ever happened to our sense of community and place? What about working together for a good cause? If there is something to fight against right now it is the NAIS and its derivatives in each of our states.
Comment Concerned liberal — April 12, 2006 @ 5:46 am
I’m not from Texas but this type of legislation is insane. Is the government changing to communism? Trying to rule each and every breathing thing. Will they want to tag us before it’s said and done? Vicki Pixler
Omaha, NE
Comment Vicki Pixler — May 1, 2006 @ 7:10 am
I read recently that by 2012 there will be no more farmers. That farming is the most endangered job. Whos going to feed us when their are no farmers and nobody nows how to grow their own food either? Are we going to be like a third world nation where everyone is starving to death? This is bad.
Comment Elisa — May 5, 2006 @ 5:23 am
People need to wake up to the fact that factory produced food is bad for them, bad for the animals, bad for the environment, bad for the economy, bad for national security, bad, bad, bad, bad!!! Factory farms are terrorism tarkets. Think! Who you gonna hit? A small farm with 1,000 chickens or a factory farm with 200,000 chickens? The reality is it is easy to hit a big chicken factory even with all their “”BIO-Security”" and they make a great target. NAIS is taking us the wrong way.
Comment Monika — May 5, 2006 @ 5:23 am
Thank you for all the great info. You have done a super job. I am writing my congresswoman now and our local papers. We must stop this thing.
Comment Will Winsome — May 5, 2006 @ 5:24 am
Thank you for doing all that you are doing on this web site!!!! You woke me up to this nightmare that the state is trying to force upon us all. I don’t have animals. I don’t even have pets. But I do like to buy local food at the farmers’s market down town. If the NAIS goes through I lose. The farmers lose. We all lose. Why is the government divorcing us from the land? Do they want us all living in little plastic boxes? UGH! That sounds like matrix.
Comment Anny Yuleis — May 5, 2006 @ 5:25 am
Hey, what happened to the Yahoo group “Americans Against NAIS”? I tried to log on, but Yahoo must have pulled the forum. Gee, I wonder, are the Feds now going over the posts, trying to find anyone on it who smacks of defiance?
Comment Karen — May 5, 2006 @ 8:29 am
Karen, this is a good question. I went to the forum the other day and was surprised to see it gone. The page is there but no archive of messages, no new activity, nothing.
Comment walterj — May 5, 2006 @ 8:57 am
Walter I couldn’t get the page to load at all! It seems it is GONE.
Comment Goatster — May 5, 2006 @ 9:22 am
Here I go again. About feeding a hungry world population, I believe that there is a misconception that the global elite want a world population of over 6 billion, and a U.S. population of over 260 million. I think they want to shrink that number to just enough peasants to do their dirty work. It is impossible to totally control 6 billion people, and they know that. Human depopulation is and continues to be the goal. Remember soylent green.
Comment Texas Goat Gal — May 5, 2006 @ 10:16 am
Obviously, before “THEY” (yes, ‘THEM’!) ever come close to chipping all animals, guess who’s next? You and your kids,of course!I suppose you knew that, didn’t you? But, “not ME!”, said the pig; and so say I. Folks, This IS the end of America unless you, me, all of us STOP IT NOW!! I’m in this ‘Til Death do us Apart’. I will not tolerate NAIS. I hope all of you are with me on the front line as we WACO the NAISzi freaks. I’m Chipped Off, aren’t you? Don “Hartless”
Comment Don Hartley — June 8, 2006 @ 10:15 am
It’s June ‘06 in Texaas and I just got a form in the mail from USDA to list number of acres, how many of every kind of livestock,including fish (how do ya’ count ‘em in that murky water?) And how many acres in hay & grain. There was an 800-number to call if I had questions. I called and told the woman on the other end that I’ve got 2 acres, 2 pet horses that are not even ridden. I don’t sell livestock. She said I HAD to fill out the form anyway. Some how, (through my vet or breed registry?) they knew that I had livestock. She told me that her family had pet horses and were in the same boat, that their animals cost them instead of making a profit since they had old retired horses. One, she said had just recently had a $6′000 colic surgery. She was sympathetic but said that I absolutely had to comply. I guess that she needs the job to be able to keep her horses. So, I filled out the form. I cannot afford the fine if I don’t. I did sell a couple of horses a couple of years ago but the last filly that I bred (thousand dollar stud fee, shipped semen..I’d got a windfall inheritance that year) I gave away to a friend who could make something of her; I can no longer ride. But apparently this little 2 acres and 2 mares is an agribusiness that really worries the Big Boys. I could take the sale of a horse away from some big ranch, I guess! I HATED to fill out the form but could not afford not to. Is this how the Germans became good little Nazis? I hope not. But when I was threatened with having to sell the mares that are my psychological counselors I caved in.I have clinical depression and am handicapped and having those big, sweet, loving animals to lean against and to hug helps to keep me sane. Shame, shame on our government.
Comment Mary Watson — June 12, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
The Three worst falts in America are,Abortion,NAIS,and Horse Slaughter.STOP THEM NOW!!!
Comment Susan — July 1, 2006 @ 11:31 am
would you believe i served 3 years in the army for our elected officials to vote for a bill that will hurt all or most soldiers, that has ever served for our country.if this bill is passed. i will question why and what i served for. —joe—–from ga.
Comment JOE MCELREATH — August 15, 2006 @ 10:29 pm
Joe you are NOT alone. My husband gave 20 years of his life in service to his country. Doing one year of it during the Desert Storm War. Talk about angry! We dreamed the whole 20 years we served to have a farm. Now the very government my husband served proudly and loyaly is about to screw us ROYALLY. We are 2 very pissed off folks. Another fellow Georgian.
Comment Goatster — August 16, 2006 @ 6:16 am
Tonight I began a project of e-mailing boer goat breeders in Texas about NAIS. I am using a breeder list that is available on the internet, where people sign up for a free listing of their ranch. I am targeting only Texas at this time, and will contact the others on that breeder list when I have finished with Texas. Here is what I am sending:
“(My name). My husband and I raise fullblood boer goats in central Texas. I am contacting boer goat breeders in Texas because of the mutual love for our animals and pride in our Texas land. I hope you have heard of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). There is a huge grassroots movement to stop this extremely intrusive scheme, which I believe will be the end of property rights for landowners. Critics do not believe the program is about “food safety”, but is yet another way to control and eliminate smaller producers, while adding billions of dollars to the coffers of big business. Please visit www.nonais.org as a starting point for more information. Thank you, and I hope you will join us in this fight. Please contact me if you have any questions.”
I don’t have a special program for mass e-mails, but I played around and figured out how to save the text and can send out four at a time. If each of us located breeders in our various interests we could cover a lot of territory.
I have only sent out 20+ as of this writing, but I will continue every evening and during the wee hours of the morning when NAIS keeps me awake.
If anyone has any simple (not too technical, please) suggestions on how to make this task easier, I would appreciate your comments. I am a dynamite researcher on the internet, but that is about where my skills end.
Comment Texas Goat Gal — November 16, 2006 @ 8:08 pm
I sent 216 e-mails since last night. Altogether it probably took me about 3-4 hours. The most time-consuming part was compiling the list of e-mail addresses from the one website. I know there has to be a more high-tech way of doing that, but I got it done. The 216 (a few others were blocked by software) were all boer goat breeders in Texas from one breeders’ list. Think of how many other breeds of goats, sheep, cattle, chickens, horses, etc. there are out there. I will finish with the other breeders from other states over the next day or two.
The boer goat was brought over from South Africa to Texas first. Actually, a lot of famous, fullblood boer goat breeders are right here in my county, where some of the first breeders made trips to South Africa. So, there are a whole lot of fullblood boer goat breeders in Texas. Texas is kind of saturated with them - but they are so interesting and appealing to many people, that they want to raise boers and nothing else.
I actually found a boer goat ranch that proudly had this front and center on their website: “Texas Premises ID #——”. I won’t put their number here, but it was 6 digits, not 8. I don’t know if that was a scrapie number. They did not appear to raise sheep.
Comment Texas Goat Gal — November 17, 2006 @ 4:29 pm
I am so thrilled!! I got a response from one boer goat breeder this morning. He said he was 100% against NAIS, and thanked me for my e-mail. I may get some negative feedback, but that one positive response makes it all worthwhile. So, thank you Ron for responding. I am now driven to do many more e-mails.
I did find one website yesterday that had a “stop NAIS” banner, and a link to the Granny Warriors. I did not send them my standard message, but I will e-mail them today with a personalized message of thanks and ask if they can put a link to this page, also.
I am going to finish that one boer breeder list today, and then I think I will target other breeds of goats in Texas, and then on to other types of livestock. BTW, 216 boer goat breeders in Texas is not anywhere near all of them. That is just one voluntary listing. I will check out some others and pick up other breeders in Texas from other lists.
I really do have a life - house cleaning, work with the goats, (husband cooks while my daughter and I feed goats), etc., but it really didn’t take that much time.
I won’t keep boring everyone with this every day, but I had to pass on my JOY that the messages I sent can do some good.
Comment Texas Goat Gal — November 18, 2006 @ 8:27 am
Thank you Tegas Goat Gal, your e-mail plan is appreciated. Yes, most of us do have lives and if we don’t stop NAIS alot of the things we value in life will be gone forever. I do what I can to spread the word here in New Hampshire and often feel like I should do more…Stay motivated you are doing a great job!
Comment Bob Constantine — November 18, 2006 @ 9:06 am
I lied! I have to tell everyone that I just got my second message back and Mike said he has been telling everyone about NAIS (they don’t believe the government will do that), and he has put a link on his website to this one! That’s two messages to me - both positive. I did not ask anyone to respond, so it is even more exciting when people take the time to answer back on their own.
Wow, I really feel like I am doing something productive with this project.
[Excellent job! You are leveraging. Every person you tell who goes on to tell more people gives us more leverage to stop NAIS. Keep up the good fight! -WalterJ]
Comment Texas Goat Gal — November 18, 2006 @ 10:26 am
Texas goat Gal,
Here is a great big “ATTA GIRL” this is the only way we have to get the word out,at the grassroots as they like to say, keep it up! and thank you!
Comment LEE — November 18, 2006 @ 8:28 pm
Estimated nonais.org webmaster
I will like to propose to you to visit our site: http://www.omninternet.com/radio/radio.asp it’s a very complete directory of radio stations, free of all kind of publicity and very easy to use, we have more than 7000 radio stations live, and continuously we are working to find more sites.
We really appreciate if you put a link on your “Contact” space, with the text “Radio Stations by State #4” with the url: http://www.omninternet.com/radio/radio.asp
I bealive this link will be interesting for all your users.
Regards
James
pd.The comment at the end of your page about IE its so funny, jeje, you must put a firefox link in your site too.
[Added. Actually, I mostly use Safari on the Macintosh although I also have iCab, Opera, Internet Explorer (IE), FireFox and others for testing purposes to make sure things work across browsers. -WJ]
Comment James — February 8, 2007 @ 11:47 am
What is amazing to me is that Texas still has not repealed this folly. It is a year after the great outcry of pbulic sentiment against nais and it is still on the books in TX.
Comment Justin — April 13, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
Justin, you are right to be wondering about Texas. I have called many people in the last few months that I do not know, but had seen things they had written against NAIS, or heard of them, and without exception, they have all gone over to the “voluntary” side. It seems that the “voluntary” movement has become powerful. Some people said that “voluntary” legislation would at least give us a breather, but all said we could go back and change it later, even after it had become law. I am very discouraged that folks here are thinking that. It will be interesting to see how many people will show up and speak in favor of HB 3573, which would repeal HB 1361, since this is what Texans said they wanted to happen over a year ago. My husband and I were the only individuals who spoke against HB 461 - the “voluntary” bill, at the ag hearing. Justin, if you are in Texas, let’s make contact and see how many folks we can rally.
Comment Texas Goat Gal — April 14, 2007 @ 12:15 pm